L. Parker Stephenson Photographs is pleased to present its third solo exhibition of work by Gallery artist Kikuji Kawada (b. 1933) with vintage photographs from his 1970s Los Caprichos series.

While lesser known than the preceding landmark series, Chizu (The Map)*, Los Caprichos is proof of Kawada’s stylistic break from the older generation of Japanese photographers, such as Ken Domon, who had extoled the powers of photographic realism.  While Chizu (published in 1965) was a metaphorical and metaphysical treatise on the atomic bomb and post-World War II Japan, Los Caprichos became a similar surrogate for the preoccupations of the following period; from social unrest to the end of days. Inspired by Francisco Goya’s 18th-century etchings critical of Spanish society, Kawada’s oblique and powerful imagery is derived from daily observations mixed with reverie.

Japanese society was struggling with its own demons of the age and I believe [Francisco Goya’s Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters] etching’s warning served as a stark reminder to us all. 

The phantasms depicted in Los Caprichos, Los Proverbios and Los Desastres De La Guerra have been scurrying through my mind ever since. They spoke to me as I made these photographs. I could feel them leading me through a parodic labyrinth in which illusions, masquerading as truth, form shadows of reality. I’m not quite sure how to describe it, but I felt the potential for a new type of photograph there. 

- Kikuji Kawada, Tokyo, 2020

This early project was included in various photography magazines of the time, the first being Camera Mainichi in 1972.  A more complete body including color work from the series was published in 1998 in book form under the title Sekai Gekijo (The Globe Theater) which included The Last Cosmology and Car Maniac, the two other segments of the artist’s Catastrophe Series.  The present exhibition at L. Parker Stephenson Photographs marks the first time since a 1986 exhibition at PGI (Photo Gallery International), Tokyo that most of these prints have been seen and offered.

More than 60 years ago Kikuji Kawada co-founded the VIVO photography collective (with, among others, Eikoh Hosoe, Shomei Tomatsu, and Ikko Narahara who died earlier this year); and he continues to be active (most visibly on Instagram) in his ongoing practice tracing the seen and invisible forces in the surfaces of the world. Just in the past year, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Baltimore Museum of Art, Bombas Gens Centre d’Art in Valencia, Asia Society in Hong Kong, and Palazzo del Duca in Senigallia, Italy have exhibited his work. Close to 30 major institutions in Japan, Europe, and the US have acquired his photographs for their collections. 

* This year marks the 55th anniversary of the release of Chizu and will be celebrated with a forthcoming book of the maquette of this seminal publication co-produced by New York Public Library and MACK Books. 

For additional information or to request images, please contact the Gallery at 212 517-8700 or by email at info@lparkerstephenson.nyc